Alison Garwood Jones

I called this one, Manly Man. As soon as I put my brush down, I heard the expression: “I’m not a doctor. I just play one on TV.”

My friend Nichola asked how I made this drawing. It came about thusly: I went to a cafe (Tampered Press) with my cheap watercolour notebook and a Uniball Gel Pen (black, waterproof), looked around for subjects, saw this guy mid-think and quickly laid down the form. I don’t carry a pencil because working in ink forces me to look and commit. A few days later, in a colouring mood, I mixed some yellow ochre and quinacridone rose and dropped in some puddles of flesh tone. Finally, I mixed red, blue and yellow to get his black hair and greyed it up with a white gel pen. The key to getting his expression was to resist looking at my page when I was drawing him. No judgement. No editing. Just doing.